Investigation of the 2013 Alberta Flood from Weather and Climate Perspectives

During 19–21 June 2013 a heavy precipitation event affected southern Alberta and adjoining regions, leading to severe flood damage in numerous communities and resulting in the costliest natural disaster in Canadian history. This flood was caused by a combination of meteorological and hydrological factors, which are investigated from weather and climate perspectives with the fifth generation Canadian Regional Climate Model. Results show that the contribution of orographic ascent to precipitation was important, exceeding 30% over the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Another contributing factor was evapotranspiration from the land surface, which is found to have acted as an important moisture source and was likely enhanced by antecedent rainfall that increased soil moisture over the northern Great Plains. Event attribution analysis suggests that human induced greenhouse gas increases may also have contributed by causing evapotranspiration rates to be higher than they would have been under pre-industrial conditions. Frozen and snow-covered soils at high elevations are likely to have played an important role in generating record streamflows. Results point to a doubling of surface runoff due to the frozen conditions, while 25% of the modelled runoff originated from snowmelt. The estimated return time of the 3-day precipitation event exceeds 50 years over a large region, and an increase in the occurrence of similar extreme precipitation events is projected by the end of the 21st century. Event attribution analysis suggests that greenhouse gas increases may have increased 1-day and 3-day return levels of May–June precipitation with respect to pre-industrial climate conditions. However, no anthropogenic influence can be detected for 1-day and 3-day surface runoff, as increases in extreme precipitation in the present-day climate are offset by decreased snow cover and lower frozen water content in soils during the May–June transition months, compared to pre-industrial climate

Investigation of the 2013 Alberta Flood From Weather and Climate Perspectives

During 19–21 June 2013 a heavy precipitation event affected southern Alberta and adjoining regions, leading to severe flood damage in numerous communities and resulting in the costliest natural disaster in Canadian history. This flood was caused by a combination of meteorological and hydrological factors, which are investigated from weather and climate perspectives with the fifth generation Canadian Regional Climate Model. Results show that the contribution of orographic ascent to precipitation was important, exceeding 30 % over the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Another contributing factor was evapotranspiration from the land surface, which is found to have acted as an important moisture source and was likely enhanced by antecedent rainfall that increased soil moisture over the northern Great Plains. Event attribution analysis suggests that human induced greenhouse gas increases may also have contributed by causing evapotranspiration rates to be higher than they would have been under pre-industrial conditions. Frozen and snow-covered soils at high elevations are likely to have played an important role in generating record streamflows. Results point to a doubling of surface runoff due to the frozen conditions, while 25 % of the modelled runoff originated from snowmelt. The estimated return time of the 3-day precipitation event exceeds 50 years over a large region, and an increase in the occurrence of similar extreme precipitation events is projected by the end of the 21st century. Event attribution analysis suggests that greenhouse gas increases may have increased 1-day and 3-day return levels of May–June precipitation with respect to pre-industrial climate conditions. However, no anthropogenic influence can be detected for 1-day and 3-day surface runoff, as increases in extreme precipitation in the present-day climate are offset by decreased snow cover and lower frozen water content in soils during the May–June transition months, compared to pre-industrial climate

Automated Energy Saving (AES) Paradigm to Support Pedagogical Activities over Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract. Fast expansion in ambient intelligence (AmI) has attracted different walks of people. AmI systems provide robust communication in open, dynamic and heterogeneous environments. This paper presents a AES paradigm that introduces wireless sensor networks to control remote servers or other devices at remote place through mobile phones. The main focus of paper is to consume minimum energy for obtaining the objectives. To realize the paradigm, mathematical model is formulated. The proposed paradigm consists of automatic energy saving model senses the environment to activate either the passive or active mode of sensor nodes for saving energy. Simulations are conducted to validate the proposed paradigm; we use two types of simulations: Test bed simulation is done to check practical validity of proposed approach and Ns2 simulation is performed to simulate the behavior of wireless sensors network with supporting mathematical model. The prototype can further be implemented to handle several objects simultaneously in university and other organizations

Bucket-Server: A system for including teacher-controlled flexibility in the management of learning artifacts in across-spaces learning situations

Recent technological advances in mobile devices enable the connection of classrooms with other virtual and physical spaces. Some approaches aim at helping teachers carry out learning situations across such spaces. However, these proposals tend to be isolated from other activities in teachers’ current common practices, and do not allow teacher-controlled flexibility of what students do during the enactment. Aiming to overcome such limitations, the Bucket-Server is a system that enables teachers to include learning buckets in their learning situations: containers of learning artifacts generated and/or consumed across-spaces by students during the enactment. Teachers create learning buckets at design time, configuring them with constraints to regulate the degree of freedom offered to the students. These learning buckets can be integrated into multiple existing technologies used in different educational spaces (e.g., web, physical and 3D virtual world spaces), thus helping embed buckets in the teachers’ current common practices

Computational thinking competences in countries from three different continents in the mirror of students' characteristics and school learning

Labusch A, Eickelmann B. Computational thinking competences in countries from three different continents in the mirror of students' characteristics and school learning. In: Kong S-C, Hoppe HU, Hsu TC, et al., eds. Proceedings of International Conference on Computational Thinking Education 2020. Hong Kong: The Education University of Hong Kong; 2020: 2-7